


Promises

by Laine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laine/pseuds/Laine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He promised that he would come back, and now he has.  For Jaime Lannister keeps his vows now.  None can accuse him of oathbreaking, not anymore.  </p><p>(After hiding his fugitive goodsister away in a brothel for three moons, Jaime comes to fetch Sansa and bring her North.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

 

When he brought Sansa here nigh three moons ago, he’d been pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness, the order, the overall _tastefulness_ of the place.  Tyrion’s preferences often run to the louche, and he didn’t truly believe that he could leave her in some slatterns’ lair- but the girls here seemed well-cared-for and tidy, and his brief conversation with the madam revealed her as a woman of practical intelligence.  He’d dropped the coins into the woman’s fleshy hand, bade an awkward, quiet farewell to Sansa (she would not look him in the eye, even when he took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up- _You’re leaving me_ , she’d whispered, _I should have known_.   He’d been angry and indignant at that, and he left in haste before he could speak words he’d come to regret).  
  
He promised to come back (he knows that the words sounded hollow, and that only made him angrier), and now he has (for Jaime Lannister fulfills his vows now- none can accuse him of oathbreaking, not anymore).  He allows the madam to usher him into a small room, cheaply-furnished but pleasant enough, and he takes a seat at the edge of the bed as he waits.    
  
The door opens just a sliver, and she slips into the room, a vial of lamp oil in her hand.  She offers him little more than a courteous smile before crossing the chamber to tend to the dimming lantern.  As she bends over the wick, back turned to him, he indulges himself in a thorough stare.  
  
It’s amazing, how dramatically girls this age can change in so short a time.  Sansa’s hips have widened, her legs have grown longer and tauter- he cranes his neck to catch a glimpse at another angle...and yes.  Her breasts are fuller, too.  
  
Of course, the last time he’d seen her, she’d been wearing a thick woolen gown, her shoulders bundled in multiple shawls.  Perhaps she hasn’t changed so drastically after all; perhaps he’s just completely unused to seeing her in a thin, clingy gown that begins too late and ends too soon, with kohl smudged around her eyes and her hair (red again, not brown anymore) loose and tousled.  
  
His mouth suddenly feels parched, and he glances about in the hopes of finding a pitcher of water.  By some happy coincidence, she chooses this moment to say, “There’s wine, if you like.”  
  
“I’d like that very much,” he replies with a crooked smile.  He watches as she fills two goblets with a pale-red liquid.    
  
“Is it any good?”  
  
“It’s dreadful,” she says as she hands him the glass.  “But I’ve grown used to it.”  
  
She smiles back at him before taking a drink: a soft, bemused smile.  “You came back for me after all.”  
  
At once, his defenses rise up and take control of his body.  Shoulders tighten, back straightens, jaw clenches.  He knows that there’s flint in his eyes when he looks her square in the face.    
  
“Always the tone of surprise, eh, my lady?”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that-”  
  
“Leave it.”    
  
Her lips plump in what briefly appears to be a pout, but she quickly collects herself.  The poise that had so astonished him in the Vale, that melted away the moment Petyr Baelish’s corpse plummeted from the Moon Door, has entirely returned, and he knows not whether to be grateful or disappointed.    
  
“You traveled here without companions?” she asks.   
  
He nods before taking a sip of the wine, and she laughs at his puckered wince.  
  
“Where are Brienne and Pod and Ser Hyle?”  
  
Jaime hesitates, unsure how to explain their adventures with the Brotherhood Without Banners, their alliance with Lady Stoneheart...and, especially, the Lady herself.    
  
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”  Her brows lift with curiosity, but Jaime shakes his head.  “Tomorrow.  I’ll explain it all then- it’s a long tale, and the hour grows late.”  
  
She clearly does not care for this answer- he can see her tongue working in her cheek- but she eventually nods.    
  
“Have you been treated well here?”  
  
“Well enough,” Sansa replies.  She peers into his glass and laughs lightly as she refills it.  “They keep me busy- I help the madam with the money.  I’ve a good head for numbers.”  
  
“I see.  And is this the usual attire for coin apprentices these days?”  In a flash of impulse, he reaches out his left hand and plucks at the hem of her skirt, which barely covers her thighs.  His fingertips brush the soft skin of her leg, and he curses the clumsiness of his left hand for the thousandth time.    
  
“ _This_ ”- she steps back from him until he is forced to release her dress- “is for my own protection, or so the madam says.  The other girls wouldn’t like the idea of a young woman living in the house without...” Her words trail away, and her face glows bright pink (it’s a lapse in the poise, and he’s glad for it).    
  
“But you don’t-”  
  
“Of course not.  Don’t be ridiculous.  I only dress the part.”  She lifts a hand and brushes it over her hair.  “They dyed my hair back for me.  Red is very popular around here.”    
  
“Very pretty,” Jaime offers.  When she smiles, he proceeds- “Then they all think that I-”  
  
“-that you bought me for the night, yes.”  Her voice is flippant, but her blush deepens as she speaks.    
  
Sansa turns away from him and walks to the other side of the room, gesturing over her shoulder to the wall behind the bed.  “The walls are thin.   You’ll hear...quite a bit.  It takes some getting used to.”    
  
He’s already noticed the sounds echoing from the adjacent chamber- moans and sighs and whimpers, most of which sound vastly exaggerated.  A particularly loud groan punctuates the end of Sansa’s sentence, and both of them stare at the wall for a moment.  Jaime feels a twist of embarrassment when he realizes that Sansa is not the only one blushing.  
  
She opens a cupboard and retrieves a blanket and pillow, which she sets down on the divan.  “We’ll have to share this chamber tonight, to keep up appearances.  I’ll take the divan, you’ll have the bed.”  
  
“No, my lady, I’d sooner take the divan-”  
  
“Jaime.  You’ve been riding for days; when’s the last time you slept in a proper bed?  Please, I insist.”    
  
When he does not argue the point, she continues brightly,  
  
“I shall have to adjust to sleeping in a bedroll again.  Shall I have my own?”  
  
“Aye, I’ve brought a new one along for you.  We shan’t have to share such close quarters ever again.”    
  
They both laugh at the memory; her bedroll had been badly damaged in a sudden rainstorm, and Jaime had offered her space in his- _she’s a slight little thing, there’s more than enough room for two_ .  It had been strange and not a little unnerving to fall asleep with a woman’s chest pressed against his, to wake up entangled in soft limbs, his face couched in thick, wild hair.  They’d drained the last of the beer and the piss-poor excuse for wine that night- he remembers being unable to distinguish the haze of drunkenness from the haze of desire when he woke from a shallow sleep to find himself hard as steel, pressed flush against her belly.    
  
“You kissed me that night.”  
  
Her words jolt him from his reverie, and he scrambles to remember.   _Did I?_  His mind sifts through image after image- _oh Gods, that’s right.._   
  
It had been a messy kiss; brutal almost, all scraping teeth and the rubbing of a rough beard against soft cheeks.  The thought of it sickens him now- _she must have been horrified._    
  
He tries to laugh, but the sound that emerges is too hoarse and dry to pass.  “I..I suppose I should ask your pardon for that, my lady.  I’d had more than my share of drink....I never intended to hurt or embarrass you.”  
  
“You did neither.  I don’t remember it that way at all.”  
  
The lamplight catches in her eyes when she looks up at him, glittering in the blue along with something peculiar and indiscernible.  But the moment passes, and she’s all business again, neatly making up a bed for herself on the divan and gesturing to a thin screen at the far end of the room.    
  
“There’s a basin back there, if you’d like to clean up.”    
  
When he disappears behind the screen, stripping his clothing and rubbing the damp sponge over his dirt-smudged skin, he notices her silhouette as she flits about the room.  Her hips move differently now; there’s an insouciance to their sway, and when she bends over to trim the lamp wick again, his eyes linger on the firm roundness of her backside.    
  
The moaning continues behind the wall, and the combination of the warm water on his skin, the phantom sounds of ecstasy, and the beautiful woman on the other side of the screen sends a rush of blood to his cock.    
  
(He hasn’t touched a woman in months- he’s barely even tried to pleasure himself- because of vows, he keeps his vows now...and because of Cersei, but he’s too tired right now to fume over his sister the whore...)  
  
His stomach tightens when her shadow turns and approaches the screen, but she only flips a pair of sateen trousers over the partition before turning away again.  “I’ve already sent your clothing off to be washed,” she says.  “I haven’t any tunics, but it tends to get stuffy in here anyway- you’ll be warm enough, I think.”  
  
Once he dries himself, he slips the garment on and scowls- he’s half-hard already, and the shiny, cheap fabric will do absolutely nothing to conceal him.    
  
Jaime’s best efforts to subdue his arousal do not work nearly as quickly as he needs, and he’s been back here for too long already. There’s nothing for it but to step back into the chamber and try to pretend that he doesn’t know why Sansa politely averts her eyes.    
  
When he attempts to settle down onto the mattress, his muscles tense all at once: an uncomfortable side-effect of long rides that has only worsened with age. He winces sharply and utters a little grunt, eyes shut tight.  
  
He does not hear her approach; those tiny feet are still as deathly-quiet as ever.  His breath catches in surprise when her hands rest on his shoulders, digging into the tight cords and tendons with a pleasant firmness.  
  
“You don’t need to do this, my lady,” he murmurs, but he soon compromises his words with a long, low sigh of pleasure as she loosens a particularly tense cluster of nerves.    
  
“It’s as much for my benefit as it is for yours,” she replies, and when he turns his head to look at her with startled green eyes, she laughs.  “It won’t do to set off on the road, only to stop after a few hours because you’re too sore to ride.”  
  
Another unfortunate choice of words, only made worse by the sudden high-pitched squeal from behind the wall.  But Sansa is undaunted; she kneads and rubs expertly, with a precision that can only come from practice.  
  
“Did you learn how to do this from the other girls?”  
  
She nods; he knows it from the way her hair sweeps back and forth over his shoulder.  “I’m kept quite separate here- I haven’t seen much, not really.  But I thought that this might come in useful one day, so I paid attention.”  Her fingertips sink beneath his shoulderblade when she says with a smile, “Of course, you aren’t getting the full experience.  I haven’t put the oils on you.”  
  
His cock twitches at that, and Sansa clearly doesn’t miss it, for she continues thusly, “It isn’t as interesting as it sounds.  The oils are very heavily fragranced- they stink to the heavens, to be honest.”  She climbs around his back and slides over the pillows until she’s against the headboard, urging him to move back with her.  “I can reach you better like this.”  Her voice sounds lower now, and Jaime settles between her legs, her tiny bare feet on either side of his knees.  While he was bathing, she’d removed her flimsy excuse for a dress; she wears only a sheer shift now.  The kohl no longer rims her eyes, and she is decidedly unperfumed, and yet a sweet scent still clings to her, something he remembers from that evening in the bedroll- juniper and a hint of citrus and something...something else that he cannot define, but that belongs wholly to Sansa.    
  
Jaime allows his eyes to flutter shut again, forcing himself to focus on his loosening muscles rather than on the softness of the girl’s body against his back.  But then her hands halt their ministrations and a pair of slim arms encircles his bare shoulders, holding him in a gentle embrace.  Her lips barely graze the shell of his ear when she whispers:  
  
“Please don’t be cross, but I want to thank you.  Thank you for coming back.”  
  
And indeed, his first instinct is to say something peevish, or to make an unkind, off-color jape.  But he’s so relaxed now, and her every syllable is pregnant with sincerity.  
  
He gives her a crooked half-smile and a deep nod of acknowledgement.  But before he can say anything, she takes his chin in her small hand and turns his face toward her.  Her mouth covers his with surprising aggression, teeth scraping at his lower lip, tongue working its way in.  Jaime twists his upper body until he can gather her into his arms; his golden hand catches in her hair and pulls, but her whimper of reaction speaks not of pain.  She grips his short locks, shifting until she nearly sits in his lap, kissing and kissing like a woman starved, tasting of sour wine and citrus and juniper and Sansa .  
  
She smiles when she breaks away from him, the skin near her mouth reddened from the rub of his beard against her.    
  
“That night, when you kissed me in the bedroll,” she begins, trailing her fingers over his jaw, “ _that_ is how I remember it.”  
  
There’s a buzzing at the back of his brain, a whirring sound of caution- vows, vows- but it’s only kissing, only an acceptance of her thanks... _I’ve no plans to marry her or get a child on her..this isn’t oathbreaking, not really_.  He cuts off her next inhale, pressing his lips to hers and lowering her down onto the flat pillows, groaning when her thighs tighten around him.    
  
They tangle up together for hours, exchanging breathless kisses, touching and tasting and laughing into each other’s mouths when a particularly dramatic series of sounds echoes from the room next door.    
  
As he dips his tongue beneath the neckline of Sansa’s shift, Jaime thinks of the separate bedroll that he acquired for her, and he wonders how best to destroy it before he and Sansa stop to make camp.

 

 


End file.
